Chapli Kebab

Most of this post was written in July 2020. I've chosen to leave most of the text the same and just add some updates.

Reading through my new favorite Afghan food blog, Afghan Culture Unveiled, I found a recipe that really intrigued me: chapli kebab. I had only eaten chapli kebab once before, back in 2009 at the Vendy Awards from the Biryani Cart. It was one of my favorite things from that awards day, but I was never able to get it again because they never had any when I went to the cart for lunches at work. I hadn't realized that they made chapli kebab in Afghanistan as well, but figured it might not be exactly the same as what I had since the folks behind the Biryani Cart weren't Afghan. (I think the main chef was a native of Bangladesh.) Some additional reading online informed me that chapli kebab originated from Peshawar, today northwest Pakistan, located right on the border of Afghanistan, so that makes a lot of sense.

The first chapli kebabs we ever had - a bit more orange/red than any recipes I've found online and have no idea how to make these!

Once I had my heart set on making chapli kebab, there were two hurdles. One, a lot of recipes use ground beef, which I don't really cook with. When I was planning this one out, we made a visit to one of the few stores in the area that sold Impossible Burger (2023 note: what a difference 2-3 years makes. Now in 2023, Impossible is everywhere and we buy it all the time), and I picked up a few packs. We'd tried Impossible Burger at a restaurant before, and it did taste remarkably like beef, so I thought maybe we could give it a try here and see how close it came to the real thing. The second hurdle was the egg being used as a binder. We had heard a lot about flax eggs but never tried them, so this seemed as good a time as any. (We might be on our third bag of ground flaxseed at this point in 2023 - lots of flax eggs have been made since then.) With those changes, the very meaty, burger-like chapli kebab turned into a vegan version in our kitchen.

The ingredients for our version of the chapli kebab were:

- 1 package of Impossible Burger ($8.99)
- 1/2 of a large bunch of scallions ($0.65)
- 1/2 of a small bunch of cilantro ($0.99)
- 1 flax egg ($0.08)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ($0.20)
- about 1 tsp dried ginger ($0.05)
- about 1 tbsp ground coriander ($0.40)
- a couple dashes of ground cinnamon ($0.08)
- about 1 tbsp of olive oil ($0.20)

The cost of the chapli kebab was about $11.72. It would have been a little over $7 if we had chosen to use ground turkey instead of Impossible Burger, but we really wanted to see how close it would come to tasting like beef. We, of course, finished it all, and it was just one component of a dinner that ended up costing approximately $20 (the final post on this dinner about spinach will have the breakdown).

The steps for making our chapli kebab were:

1. Prep - chop scallions, chop cilantro, chop garlic.

2. Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl. [Apparently, flax eggs take 5 minutes to make, which I didn't know in advance, so I mixed that in last.]

3. Knead the meat for 5 minutes.

4. Heat olive oil in large skillet. Roll the meat mixture into about 8 balls, and cook for a few minutes on each side until browned and cooked through.

I love ground meat dishes, and being able to use Impossible Burger, to not have to worry about various bacteria that hitch a ride on raw meat, to not have to worry about undercooking the meat, and to also know that it's better for the environment, has been great. I had made meatballs with it a couple of weeks earlier as a test run, and the things we liked and were amazed by then were still true here. How do they make soy taste like actual red meat? How do they make the product so that it gets that browning and charring just like actual meat does? Science is pretty incredible stuff.

Anyway, back to the chapli kebabs. They came out so well. The flavorings were excellent. They didn't stay together quite as well as they probably would have with an egg, but they were still really good. We ate them with some sliced up raw tomatoes and the naan (previously written about for the 52 week cooking challenge), just like in the recipe photo, and that was such a great combination. Such flavorful "meat" with refreshing tomatoes wrapped up in pillowy naan, what's not to love about that?

I guess I should ask B, because he ate maybe a third to a half of one kebab and didn't seem to like it very much. I don't know if it's because it did taste like meat (since he hadn't loved eating red meat in the past all the time), if it was because he found it too crumbly, if he wasn't in the mood for the spices today (even though he's had them before), if he was just too distracted by the more appealing (to him) bread and tomatoes, or if he was just being a toddler, but he wasn't a huge fan of it. (2023 note: I've tried it several times since then, and it seems very hit or miss for him still.) A and I really liked it though, constantly marveling at how it could possibly taste just like meat. I would make this again, maybe with Impossible Burger, maybe with ground chicken. (2023 note: It's been Impossible every time.) Happy to have found a good recipe for chapli kebab!

The Middle Third

Quick blurbs on the middle part of the challenge, many of which feel so long ago. Besides challenges already posted (at least there were a few this time!), skipping weeks 19, 24, 25, 28, 30 for the shared AtWCC posts that will come at some point, and week 21 because I wrote most of it already.

Week 18: garlic

The Tasty recipe was called 40 clove garlic chicken, but the three heads of garlic I used ended up being around 45. We love garlic in our household, so even more garlic was not a problem! This was delicious, and not as garlicky as one would think for 45 cloves. It was much more manageable than the vegetable pizza covered in whole roasted garlic cloves that I ate at Planet Hollywood when I was around 10 (still remember that one; it made an impact). We would definitely make this again.

Week 20: zero waste

We had a few very ripe bananas on the counter that I forgot about, so turned them (and a bunch of other ingredients already in the pantry) into banana pancakes based on a Nora Cooks recipe, so they wouldn't go to waste. Not really much else to say about this challenge. The banana pancakes were fine, but we've made pancakes like this, possibly even these exact ones, before.

Week 27: made the wrong way

In what will probably be my best-performing post ever on Reddit, I made falafel waffles. This one really stumped me because I personally don't really think that many things can be made the "wrong" way. Unconventional, maybe, but not necessarily wrong. I went with falafel waffles, because they sounded fun, and using the "wrong" appliance/cooking method seemed like the closest I was going to get to finding something to complete this challenge. Apparently it was a winning idea, but I don't even remember where I first heard about it years ago. We made the falafel in the waffle maker and topped the waffles with salad. I also attempted to fold one around the salad, sort of like the Taco Bell naked chicken chalupa, but it all fell apart. This was fun to try.

Week 29: shredded

I think this July dinner is where the series of chicken salads began. I made the poached chicken and cabbage salad with cashews and miso dressing from Kenji’s cookbook, The Wok, and it had lots of shredded ingredients - chicken, carrots, scallions, and cabbage. I also added corn so B would have something he liked. This was a very refreshing summer salad.

4 more done, 18 more to go!

Week 6 - Medieval

The week 6 theme, medieval, was also a repeat (this time, 2016), and it was just as challenging this time around. I researched recipes again, but found myself right back at the same Game of Thrones site (Inn at the Crossroads). I didn't want to repeat the exact same meal as last time, but the white beans and bacon (recipe) were so tasty that I decided to make them again. Plus, B generally likes beans and bacon, and he wasn't around yet when we made it last time, so it would be new to him.

I was really intrigued by one of the pages called Salladhor Saan’s Shipboard Dinner. I’ve still never read or watched anything Game of Thrones, but the dinner included medieval Arabic lamb meatballs in an eggplant sauce, which immediately sparked my interest. Although we don’t really cook much red meat at home by choice, I decided to make an exception here to follow the recipe closely and use ground lamb, since I don’t have enough experience in medieval cooking to know if there would really be an appropriate substitute. The store only had a ground beef and lamb mix, so that’s what I got.

The meatball and eggplant portion of dinner took a while, even though it sounded so simple on paper and I took shortcuts. There were two main parts - making the eggplant and making the meatballs. The eggplant, if following the recipe, would have been time-consuming, as you had to roast the entire eggplant. Instead, I grabbed a jar of roasted eggplant from the store, and it worked just fine. To the eggplant, I added about 3 oz of plain Greek yogurt, two squeezes of garlic from the bottle (about 2 cloves minced), some salt, a little sesame oil, and some ground coriander. So easy and fairly quick.

The meat portion took longer. First, since I don’t really buy ground red meat, I had to check on the cooking temperature and also do some freshness tests (like sniff test, slime test, etc), especially since the meat had turned an unappealing brown compared to the red hue it had when I bought it. Once the meat was in the bowl, I added paprika, salt, and pepper, along with a little cumin and cinnamon, kneaded it all together, and rolled out some meatballs. A little olive oil in the skillet, and in went the meatballs.

The cooking instructions here were where things didn’t go quite as expected. They said to fry the meatballs until browned, to add water to cover, and to simmer for about 10 minutes. The medieval source cookbook did mention to cook the meatballs in the water until it evaporated, which seems like it would have taken far longer than 10 minutes based on how much water was left in ours, especially since we didn’t even fully cover the meatballs with water. The texture also didn’t really change during the water-simmering step, so if I were to make these again, I’d probably just skip it. We thought we had to do it so we could throw the eggplant-yogurt sauce into the same pan, but I ended up just heating that separately, adding a little bit of the water from the meatball skillet, and putting the meatballs on top, which I think we liked much better than the other way.

The eggplant sauce was fantastic, and I would definitely make that again. It was also a really good complement for the meatballs. I don't know if I would buy this meat mix again, as I feel like Impossible would have worked just as well. The white beans and bacon were, of course, good. Overall, the meal was nice, but our favorite part was probably that eggplant sauce.

Week 3 - Turkish

Happy new year! I've already cooked week 3 for the 2023 challenge, so I really need to catch up and post these single-digit challenge weeks from the 2022 challenge ASAP!

Week 3 was Turkish, and I decided to give one of my favorite Turkish dishes, mercimek koftesi, another try. I did it the last time Turkish came up in the challenge back in 2014, but it had been a long time since I last made it, definitely before B came along. This time, I found some new (to me) recipes at 196 Flavors and Vidar Bergum, combined elements of those with the one I came up with last time, and hoped for the best after about six hours of chilling them in the fridge.

The recipe I posted back in 2014 is still fairly close to what I ended up doing after consulting with the other two recipes, except that the pastes and seasonings were added to the onions first, then the lentils, bulgur, and onions were mixed in a mixing bowl and not on the stove, and then the scallions and parsley were added at the very end once the flavors had been adjusted. So, the ingredients were similar, the order of operations was a little different, but the general idea of mixing them together was the same. I did notice that I used far more of each paste than the recipes did in order to get the color and flavor to our liking and what we remembered from our favorite restaurant versions (and it was not because the biber salcasi got old and lost flavor; it was new), but we were happy with how it turned out.

The mercimek koftesi may not have been the most attractive dish (I couldn't get them shaped as well as the professionals), but it was definitely tasty. I still love this vegetarian kofta as much as the first time I tried it, and now that I have fresh pepper paste and bulgur (well, almost a year opened now...), I think I should make it more often!

Our Year in Food: 2022

2022 was another year that flew by. The weeks just seemed to pass at a quicker rate than ever before, and we definitely did not keep this blog updated with any of our cooking and food adventures. Hopefully we'll be able to do better about preserving our memories in 2023 (and catching up)!

The first restaurant meal we ate in 2022: I had a solo meal at Fat Choy (sadly now closed), A had a solo meal at Summer Salt, but our first meal together was delivery from Pokebowl Station.

The first home-cooked meal we ate in 2022: A traditional Southern New Year's Day meal of hoppin' John and collard greens. It's my usual go-to New Year's Day meal, but the plan is to try something different this time around.

The last restaurant meal we ate in 2022: In person, it would be Mario Happy Meals and McDonald's, but our New Year's Eve lunch was a delivery of cheese oven pie, babaghanoush, spinach pie, and kibbeh from Ayat (more on them below).

The last home-cooked meal we ate in 2022: Mussels (surprisingly good prepared ones from Costco), fire-roasted vegetables (also surprisingly good out of the freezer from Costco), homemade French bread (A), and a failed homemade Algerian orange cake (me; failed as a Bundt cake, but tasted good).

# of different restaurants we tried in 2022 (together or separate): 73 in person and 57 for takeout and delivery. Huge jump for in-person visits this year versus last year.

Places explored (outside the NYC metro area): Chicago, IL. First time out of the metro area since 2019, and first time on a plane since 2018. Felt like a huge step after the isolation of the past few years.

Amazing vegan sushi from our Chicago trip

Most frequented restaurants of 2022 (together, in person): A three-way tie between the vegan burger joint Lekka Burger in Tribeca, Korean fried chicken spot Mad for Chicken in Cobble Hill, and Indian-inspired Malai Ice Cream in Carroll Gardens. Mad for Chicken and Malai were a common post-soccer lunch and snack combo, so not surprised that that's high on the list.

Chicken tenders from Mad for Chicken

Most frequented restaurant of 2022 (takeout or delivery): Putting aside McDonald's (because some of those visits were just for fries or breakfast, and because it's probably B's favorite place to eat so we're there a lot), we ordered from Ayat, a Palestinian spot in Bay Ridge, more than once a month. That makes two years in a row now that this has been Ayat, which doesn't surprise us at all because of the way they can accommodate B's allergy.

Mezze filistini from Ayat

Progress on WorldEats challenge (posting): 57/196. I'm confused because I count 57 countries on our summary list, if we include the new post we wrote this year, but it's been 58 in this year in review for years, since before the pandemic, so I have no idea what the missing two are. It's 82/196 for where we've actually been, so maybe we can do some catch-up in the coming year whenever Swarm reminds us of places we've been.

Progress on Around the World Cooking Challenge: Alphabetically, we're almost done with "unit" 5, Algeria, but we have a lot of post catching up to do.

Favorite overall meal of 2022: Our first in-person visit to Ras Plant Based, a vegan Ethiopian spot in Crown Heights. We'd ordered some of their delicious food earlier in the pandemic, but this was a lovely, warm spring day, right after our visit to the botanical garden to see the cherry blossom trees, and we sat outside enjoying dishes at a table in the sun. B was feeling adventurous that day, and ate some sambusa along with trying some of our other vegetable dishes (more than he would eat on subsequent visits), and we got to indulge in Ethiopian cuisine for the first time in a long time. Any visit to Ras is tasty, but that lunch felt special.

Looking forward to new adventures, and wishing you all the best in 2023!

The First Third

Making our way back to the beginning of the challenge before next year's challenge starts, here's a group post from the first third. Besides the ones already posted, skipping weeks 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 15 for the AtWCC (managed to fit in a lot!) and week 6 because I wrote most of that one already.

Week 4: on a stick

I had high hopes for this Serious Eats tsukune recipe, because those Japanese chicken meatballs skewers are one of my favorite izakaya dishes, but these were just okay. Considering we made these almost a year ago (I really need to get better about more timely writing), I don't remember a lot about them except that they didn't live up to my expectations. I don't know if it was because we had to use an egg replacer, or because they were made on a grill pan instead of an actual grill, or what was different about ours, but they just didn't taste as good as the ones you would get at an izakaya. Because I love tsukune, I do want to give them another shot whenever we make our way to the Japan section of the AtWCC, so I'm not counting them for that here.

Week 5: plant milk

I decided to go sweet for the plant milk challenge to try something different instead of just using store-bought plant milk as a substitute in dishes like we often do. First, I made some vegan condensed milk based on a Make It Dairy Free recipe (far easier to do than I thought it would be), and then used that to make some lime coconut snowballs (a MyRecipes recipe). They were different than how I thought they would come out. I was anticipating something solid and chewy like cookie dough, but they were soft and sticky, plus incredibly sweet. Tasty, but I couldn't eat more than a couple at a time because of how sweet they were. B and his sweet tooth liked them a lot.

Week 7: molding

The molding challenge was a complete failure. I made, or tried to make, dinosaur fruit jellies based on a YouTube video from Let's Stella. They looked so simple to make - Naked juice smoothies, sugar, and corn starch set in an ice cube mold. I got some cute dinosaur molds, thinking that we'd have lots of juice-filled fruit snacks that would be healthier than the store-bought ones. Except they didn't set. There were also supposed to be orange ones but I couldn't get those out of the mold at all. The taste was fine, but they were not the jellies they were supposed to be.

Week 11: inspired by art

I always have a little difficulty with the "inspired by" weeks, whether it's movies or TV shows or video games or books or art. I guess I'm not very inspired. The only thing that came to mind for this (besides a Mondrian cake, which I am not talented enough to make) was Campbell's soup, based on Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans. I found a recipe for tomato soup meatloaf at The Kitchen Magpie, and I went with that, subbing turkey for the meat portion. This was over 9 months ago, so I don't remember much about it except that it turned out a little too watery on the bottom and it had nice flavor from the tomato soup. We have other meatloaf recipes we like more, so we'll probably stick with those, but this was nice for the novelty.

Four more recaps done, 24 more to go (at least it's less than half a year?)!

The Last Third

Time for a group challenge post for the last third of the year! Skipping weeks 40, 41, 45, 47, and 51 because they're also for the AtWCC and week 49 because I already wrote most of that one separately. Not sure if I'm going to get all these posts done before the end of the year, but I'm going to try my best!

Week 36: smashed

My immediate thought when hearing "smashed" was smashed potatoes, probably because A makes them so often (and so well). With A's help, I put together loaded smashed potatoes (based on a recipe from Budget Bytes) topped with cheddar cheese, (vegan) sour cream, bacon bits, and red onions. We don't usually top them with more than garlic and herbs (and they are delicious that way), but it was nice to try something different, especially that tasty melted cheese.

Week 37: honey

I stumbled upon a honey butter biscuit copycat recipe on Let's Dish when doing research for this challenge, and they sounded like a good thing to try since I'd never been to the Texas-based Church's Chicken chain before (and A had never had the biscuits). They apparently sell millions of biscuits a year and have even trademarked the term "Honey-Butter Biscuit" (not sure how since that sounds like a generic description to me, but I'm not a trademark professional). The biscuits were good, although I think I might have cooked them too long since the honey butter browned a bit too much on the bottom, and I personally prefer my drop biscuits not so sticky. Maybe we'll give these another try for the Texas part of the AtWCC.

Week 38: cultured

They announced the week 38 theme far in advance for people who wanted to do things like culture their own yogurt, but that was still far beyond my comfort level for safety reasons, so I figured I would just stick to using a cultured product like yogurt. I went with Molly Yeh's yogurt-marinated chicken skewers which were flavored with ras el hanout and harissa, and skewered with peppers and onions. These came out good, but probably not something I would make regularly at this point considering the marinating time and how long it takes me to skewer things.

Week 39: soaking

I like having overnight oats for breakfast, but they've become a bit of a running joke in our household because I'm always talking about them and rarely making them because I forget to set them up at night. This challenge was the perfect motivation to actually make them, and this bowl was overnight oats with almond butter, oat milk, chia seeds, flaxseeds, cinnamon, maple syrup, and topped with blueberries and blackberries. I really do need to make them more.

Week 43: punny names

"Punny names" is the type of concept challenge that I'm not good at picking recipes for. I spent a long time googling punny foods, punny recipes, and all variations of that, but found very few things that interested me. Eventually, I got attached to the idea of doing pizza for "pizza my heart," but at the end decided on "little pizza my heart," which made more sense because I was making little flatbread pizzas. The pizzas were topped with artichoke pesto sauce, mozzarella, provolone, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses, and a pancetta and mushroom heart. I was actually really happy with the combination flavor-wise, and the hearts, while more difficult to make than I thought they would be, kept their shape thankfully.

Week 44: Greek

The country weeks are usually a no-brainer for doubling up with the AtWCC, but I wasn't in the mood for trying regular spanakopita when this challenge rolled around. I don't know why, but I was really fixated on making it into a Christmas tree. (Note: It was not Christmas or December, not even Halloween yet.) I followed the recipe on Dimitra's Dishes for the spanakopita Christmas tree, and with a little help from A for making the tree "branches," it turned out pretty well. Probably more time-consuming than making regular spanakopita, which I'll likely do next time instead, as fun as this was.

Week 48: leaves

There are lots of things you can do with leaves, but I naturally gravitated toward salad. Now, if I had been doing these in order, you would have known that I made at least three other chicken-based salads in the second half of the year. I can't explain why, but my brain just really wanted salads like this, so I just went with it. This one was very loosely based on a Food52 recipe for a farmhouse chicken salad, and the leaves I ended up using were arugula, parsley, tarragon, chives, and thyme. I also made some tarragon radishes on the side. Good salad, but a ton of work with all those fresh herbs, so this is probably a one-time thing if made exactly like this.

Week 50: rosemary

Last one for this batch! I thought I might end up using this for the AtWCC too, but it was not meant to be. I chose rosemary aloo paratha based on another Food52 recipe, since I'd always wanted to try making paratha and rosemary and potatoes were such a good combination. (I didn't want to make more smashed potatoes since I had just done that for a challenge recently.) Unfortunately, there was something wrong with one of our potatoes and it just would not get soft enough for mashing despite being fork tender when boiled. I should have just used instant mashed potatoes but I was trying to do it the "right" way. That meant that the chunks of potatoes that wouldn't mash broke through the dough, and the whole thing was a mess. I'll try paratha again for the AtWCC, and hopefully it'll come out better next time.

Week 52 - Broiled

Last challenge of the year! (But not the last challenge post of the year because I'm so far behind in posting.) I did all 52 weeks of the challenge this year, and I did them all on time, even the themes I wasn't that into, which I'm fairly proud of. The theme for the last challenge of the year was broiled, and I went fairly simple, making a broiled salmon (based on a Dinner at the Zoo recipe) with broiled balsamic vegetables (based on a Budget Bytes recipe). The salmon came out perfectly, and we definitely want to make that again. The vegetables were also good, very fresh, and went well with the salmon.

I'm still a broiler novice, to the point where I didn't even realize that the broiler needed to heat up for about 5 minutes before it started "working," until the vegetables looked exactly the same 5 minutes later. That explains why some of my previous recipe attempts where I just turned the broiler on for a set amount of minutes (instead of watching to see when it had browned or melted) did not work at all (ex: pan de yuca). We never used the broiler in our old apartment because we weren't exactly sure where it was in that oven or if we could trust it, so I can probably count our broiler usage on less than two hands. This challenge was a great way to end the year because I really feel like I learned something!

Week 22 - Desert

The theme for Week 22 - desert - came up right as we were finishing Albania and moving on to Algeria for the AtWCC in mid-May, so it seemed like a good time to jump right in to Algerian cooking. After all, more than 80% of Algeria is desert, so it felt appropriate. I've been trying to post the AtWCC recaps in order (generally, at least for the alphabetical ones), but since I'm already doing this one for the 52 week cooking challenge and Algeria is fresh(er) in my mind, I'm going to try to do those first (other than the next few Afghanistan ones I've already written) and jump back to the other four "units" later.

For this challenge, I decided on a kefta and olive tadjine from the site, The Teal Tadjine. There are a lot of delicious-sounding recipes there, and it's been a great source for us as we explore Algerian cuisine. As I mentioned in our Bar Omar post, tadjine has always been the first thing that came to mind for us when thinking about Algerian and North African cuisine generally, so it was an appropriate first choice for our challenge.

Although the original recipe used beef, I substituted chicken here, but other than that and the flax egg replacement, stuck fairly closely to the recipe. The meatballs were made of ground chicken, garlic, onion, cubed bread, milk, cumin, flax egg, green olives, parsley, salt, and pepper, and the sauce had onion, garlic, paprika, tomato paste, preserved lemon, tomatoes, more green olives, salt, and pepper. I skipped the harissa in the hopes that if B decided to try the meatballs, they wouldn't be too spicy for him. (It was a good choice - he did have a couple!) I was really excited to try this recipe in part because I had never cooked with preserved lemon before. I love trying new ingredients!

There was a fair bit of prep to this recipe - pitting and blanching olives, removing seeds from the lemon, making the flax eggs, cubing the bread and soaking in milk, grating the tomatoes, and chopping up the onions, garlic, parsley, some of the olives, and the preserved lemon. A helped with grating the tomatoes, which was something we'd never really done before, and it's definitely a different texture than anything you can get canned. I also learned from the prep for this that pitting olives was much easier than I thought, since we usually just bought the pitted varieties from the store (but I couldn't find any that day).

After the prep, making the recipe was fairly simple. First, the meatballs, then the sauce, then the meatballs go back into the sauce and the whole thing simmers for about 20 minutes to come together. We didn't own a tadjine, so I used a risotto pan which seemed close enough.

We really liked how this recipe turned out. It was a little salty, but considering the amount of olives involved, that wasn't too shocking. It also made B happy, because he loves olives. Overall, it was a comforting, cozy recipe that was delicious. We would definitely make this again, and it was a great way to kick off our Algerian unit!

Bar Omar

We're currently in the Algerian section of the AtWCC, which brings back memories of the only Algerian restaurant we've ever been to - Bar Omar in Williamsburg. We went back in 2017 when we were doing more WorldEats exploration than we are now, and the dinner we had was great. The restaurant was only open for a couple of years and closed a long time ago (2018, maybe?), but since Algerian cuisine wasn't common in NYC, we were grateful we had the opportunity to go. Even now, there are only a couple of restaurants that are serving Algerian cuisine, so it's still relatively rare.

We went to Bar Omar after spending the afternoon going to the Hall of Magic (a promotional event sponsored by The Magicians, reminding us we still need to finish watching that), and walking around on a cold January night. The sign outside advertising "Algerian soul food" sounded like exactly what we needed in the middle of winter.

We split one appetizer and one entree (since the tagines served two). Our starter was chicken bastilla, described as "sweet and savory chicken with almonds in brick pastry." We had a little familiarity with brick pastry from a Tunisian dinner in London (which we never got up to in our recaps, maybe someday we'll get back to those), and thought it would be similar to that (which was very crispy and light). What arrived was more like a pie, denser, more solid, but the flavor of the seasoned chicken was excellent. It's probably the taste we remember most from that meal. The powdered sugar on top was also a surprise for us in how well it went with such a savory dish.

Tagine was the dish we most associated with Algerian and North African cuisine generally. We chose the kefta, so it came with "North-African beef meatballs, cracked egg, potatoes, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, and zucchini." (These recaps almost six years later would have been so much more difficult without pictures of the menu.) We had some couscous on the side, and it was good from what we remember, but it didn't make as much of an impression on us as the bastilla, maybe because we've had more similar dishes to tagine before.

Based on our one meal there, we would have returned, but we didn't find ourselves in Williamsburg very often back in 2017, so unfortunately didn't make it back before they closed. But we are thankful that we made it there at all, because otherwise we never would have known about chicken bastilla!

Week 23 - Stinky

I am not a fan of stinky cheese, which is where my mind immediately went upon reading the theme for Week 23. That and durian, which I'm still a little afraid to eat/purchase. After looking around a little bit, I stumbled on a thread on Reddit where someone wanted suggestions for things that smelled really stinky but still tasted good. That was an idea I could get behind for choosing this meal. Among the ideas, which included things made with fish sauce, asafoetida, and others, was a recommendation for bagna cauda. I had always wanted to try that, and it was already on the list for the Italy part of the AtWCC (who knows when that will be, as we're still in A), so bagna cauda was the plan!

If you've never heard of it before, bagna cauda is a garlic and anchovy dip that originated in northern Italy in the Piedmont region. The primary ingredients are olive oil, garlic, and anchovies, with some variations adding in butter or cream to make the dip even richer. It's served with bread, lots of raw vegetables (like endives or peppers or other crunchy things), and onions, which are roasted whole and skin-on.

Following recipes from Marcellina in Cucina and Serious Eats, I intended for ours to be made with olive oil, garlic, anchovies, and butter with sides of toasted country bread and some raw crunchy vegetables. Of course, life happens, and we ended up being in quarantine thanks to a potential COVID exposure at the time we made this, and we couldn't get a grocery delivery order in time, so the plan had to be adjusted. The main ingredients remained the same, but I ended up serving ours with toasted wheat sandwich bread (the old loaf of country bread we had was ... a little too old; I need to start freezing bread instead of putting it in the fridge) and the whole roasted onions instead. I think I just missed the discussion about the onions the first time I read the recipes, because otherwise they would have always been part of the plan. Not a very colorful meal, but it would have to do.

The first thing I did was roast the onions. I'd never actually roasted onions whole before, but I think I kind of love it now. I could just eat onions whole like this as a snack. I ended up covering them in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then roasting them at 375 for about 25 minutes. I don't remember what site I got that from because I read 5 or 6 of them when I was looking into this, but they then said to raise the temp to 400 degrees for another 15 minutes. As soon as the temperature went up, oil started splattering all over the inside of the oven, which was making me incredibly uncomfortable, so I turned it off and figured they would be done enough for dipping by that point anyway. They probably cooked a little longer, because I just left them in the oven until it cooled off. I don't know what the onions are supposed to be like for this, but for us, they were actually the perfect texture for dipping at that point.

The next thing was to prep the garlic - peeling all 30 cloves, removing the germ if it was starting to get some color, and then slicing it up. That, as expected, took forever, but at least I could watch YouTube videos while doing it. The garlic then was simmered in some water for about 10 minutes to help it soften, and then combined with the olive oil in a cold pan over low heat to soften some more. This was supposed to take about 10 minutes, but it was still not smash-able at that point, so I raised the heat a bit, figuring maybe our low heat was actually too low. It got better, but it did take longer than 10 minutes even after poaching it first.

Anchovies were next, and this was my first time ever cooking with them. I guess anchovies are packaged in all different ways, but the only ones I could really find were canned. I drained them, and then added them to the sauce so they could melt. That happened far more quickly than I expected, especially considering some of the garlic was still not very smashed at the time. I added a few tbsp of butter at this point, and then after some more stirring and smashing, the sauce really did come together.

I usually try to make our cooking challenge meals toddler-friendly and accessible to all of us, but I had a feeling (which turned out to be correct) that this one would be for just me and A with the strong fishy and salty flavors and also B's current aversion to sauces. We thought this was really good. Very salty, far more salty than what we would normally make at home (at least on purpose), but quite tasty. The best bites were the ones with the onions, which seemed to both temper the saltiness a little bit and add another layer of flavor. Those bites were amazing. We did enjoy it, but I don't know if I would make it again, partially because of the saltiness and partially because B probably won't eat it until he decides he likes sauce again. But the roasted whole onions? That I would 100% do again.