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 26 - Blended

I had been using our immersion blender a lot this spring, making sauces of various types, and then the Week 26 theme came up as blended and my mind drew a blank. I couldn't even remember which sauces I had just made with the blender, much less come up with an idea for a new one! After a bit of googling, I stumbled upon chermoula, which was actually a perfect fit since we were in the Algerian section of the AtWCC, and chermoula is, per Wikipedia, "a marinade and relish used in Algerian, Libyan, Moroccan, and Tunisian cooking." We also love green sauce of all types, so it was an easy choice.

Chermoula consists of fresh herbs with citrus and spices, and there are a bunch of variations. From what I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the recipe I used from Epicurious is the Moroccan variation (it's in the recipe description) but also seems like it could be Algerian. (Wikipedia doesn't give an Algerian description specifically.) For that reason, I'm going to count it for both Morocco and Algeria for the AtWCC. I didn't discover until later that some varieties also include preserved lemon, and since we still have one in the fridge left over from some other recipes, maybe we'll be making more chermoula in the not-so-distant future.

The version I made (with some adaptations/shortcuts on the spices) used the following ingredients:

- ground coriander ($0.10)

- ground cumin ($0.10)

- a few garlic cloves ($0.10)

- 3/4 cup olive oil ($1.20)

- lemon zest from 1 lemon (see next)

- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice ($0.34)

- smoked paprika ($0.05)

- salt ($0.02)

- red pepper flakes ($0.02)

- 1 pack of cilantro ($1.99)

- 1 pack of parsley ($1.99)

- about 15 mint leaves ($0.85)

I haven't done an estimated cost in a while (although since everything is posting all out of order, it may not appear that way), but the chermoula itself was about $6.76. Add on some couscous for about $1, chicken tenderloins ($5.44), zucchini ($2.29), carrots ($0.60), red onion ($0.85), and oil/seasoning for roasting ($0.60), and the total was around $17.54. It made a lot of food (no leftovers though), but not bad for dinner for three, considering the way prices have increased since I was last doing these comparisons.

The sauce was really easy to make. Blend everything other than the herbs, and then blend the herbs in. I was a little concerned in the beginning because it looked more orange than green, but once all the herbs were in, it was the green sauce I was expecting. It tasted really good on its own, but we've been known to eat various green sauces by the spoonful, unaccompanied, before, so this was no different.

Typically used with fish or seafood (according to Wikipedia), chermoula is also used with meat and vegetables, so that was what I did, making it a topping for some grilled chicken (re-used the chicken souvlaki recipe from the Week 24 challenge because of the complementary flavors, just without the sticks, more on that another time), couscous, and roasted vegetables (zucchini, carrots, red onions). We really enjoyed it. It was a little lighter on the spice than the original recipe because I toned it down for B, even though he didn't actually end up eating any of it. Would make this again!