Falafel Is French

I'd like to share two words with you: Paris, and falafel.

Baguettes, croissants, beignets, crepes, chocolate, cheese, wine, beer, Italian food, and ice cream (and something called flammkuche which basically turned out to be pizza stroganoff) will get you through Europe as a vegetarian, or as someone who is married to one. And the ice cream will get you very far when travelling with children. But when you get to the end, sometimes you just need falafel. Parisian falafel should be considered a tourist attraction in its own right - I ate the best falafel sandwich of my life there, and it was truly a thing of beauty, like everything in Paris. After more than a week of also truly beautiful, but heavy food, my body heaved a sigh of relief as I ate, saying, “Aaaah, vegetables, how I missed you!”

The hole-in-the-wall place where we got our falafel had a little salad bar where you could add your own toppings, including (but not limited to) tabbouleh, green and black olives, radish salad, and an amazing concoction of parsley, olive oil and red chili flakes which I'm sure has a name, so please let me know if you know what it is. I'm going to research it when I get home. The aubergine included an oily slab of roasted eggplant, in addition to the falafel. And of course the falafel were crispy on the outside, and moist on the inside. But I could have been eating lumps of clay and I wouldn't have cared, because the salade was so good.

We loved it so much, the next day we bought two more sandwiches to eat in our hotel in Brussels after we drove in from Paris. That was definitely a good call, because after being lost for more than an hour, getting a full unplanned tour of Brussels (lovely, and surprisingly gritty), asking approximately 10 people for directions (including two slightly punk-rock Dutch tourists, a parking lot attendant, a policeman, and a convenience store clerk who did not speak English but very fortunately spoke Hindi), and enduring countless plaintive cries of “I need to go to the bathroom,” those falafel sandwiches were a very welcome sight indeed after we plunked our luggage down and collapsed into our hotel room chairs.

More to come in India...

Vive la France

So, I guess I should let you all know we're going on a little trip in a few days. Final stop is south India, with pit stops beforehand in Karlsruhe, Paris, and Brussels. I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. First of all, I am nowhere near as glamorous as it makes me sound. Second of all, I can't believe it's actually going to happen. Maybe I will believe once my feet actually touch the ground in Europe. Thanks, bro-in-law and future sis-in-law, for getting married! We get to witness the happy occasion of your wedding, as well as experience the trip of a lifetime. And eat a lot of really good food along the way, of course. Needless to say, during this month-long period, my posts to this blog may be sporadic, but I intend to do the best I can to keep you all updated, as I'm sure I'm going to have a lot (ie: way too much) to write about.

Before I go, I wanted to leave you with something I made in honor of one of the stops on our trip. You see, for the past ten years, ever since I hit the motherlode and found the entire Time-Life Foods of the World series sitting in in a musty old box in the back of a thrift store in Bremerton,Wash., a picture has been hiding in the back of my mind, in its own musty box. It is a picture of a little boy chomping into a slice of buttered baguette topped with six tiny whole radishes.*

The other day I found some pretty little fuchsia, red, violet, and white radishes in the store across the street, and ding-ding! I remembered the picture, pulled it out of the box in my mind, dusted it off, and bought a baguette to go with the radishes.

When I got home, I sliced the radishes into thin rounds, made some onion butter, sliced the baguette, and brought it all to our condo association potluck. Unfortunately, I think many of my neighbors... preferred the baked beans. Too bad I forgot the photo caption, which reads, "The open-faced radish sandwich is an acquired taste – best acquired at an early age." I dunno. Two neighbors, the husband, the five-year-old, and I thought they were pretty damn good.

* The picture is on page 44 of The Cooking of Provincial France. This and all the other pictures of little four-year-old Jean-Baptiste's Sunday family picnic will make you want to quit your life and move immediately to France. Incidentally, this is the volume written by M.F.K. Fisher.

Open-Faced Radish Sandwiches with Onion Butter
Just make some onion butter, slice some radishes, or leave them whole if they're on the tiny side, and slice a baguette. Spread your baguette slice with the butter, and top with radishes. Eat and enjoy. Vive la France!
To make onion butter: Puree about one quarter of a raw onion in a blender, then sautee the onion puree in a few tablespoons of butter until the raw flavor of the onion cooks away, and the onion softens. Let the onion puree cool a bit, then pour it into more butter (about one cup) at room temperature and mix it together. Add salt to taste. The butter is better if it has a few hours to sit before serving, and should be served at room temperature. However, it is nice if your radishes can be cold.

Peach-Tomato-Basil: Do It, Now

One very good thing about living in Georgia is peach season, which seems to have now begun. We found peaches at a gas station stand just off the highway last week, and this week at our local farmers' market. I love the gas station stands around here for their peaches, watermelons, boiled peanuts, and jars of chow chow. What is chow chow, you ask? Well, it's worthy of its own post, which I imagine I'll get to eventually, but for now suffice it to say it's a vinegary relish of cabbage, tomatoes, spicy peppers, onions, etc. marked by the distinctive flavor of celery seed. Last year we bought some, and when we got home mixed it with our leftover boiled peanuts and some leftover brown rice. That was a fine, simple dinner for road-weary travelers, and I might add, the healthiest meal I have ever found at a gas station. Those three things (chow chow, boiled peanuts, and brown rice) tasted like they were born to be together – I am only surprised no one else has thought of it. Though maybe someone has, and I just couldn't find it in Google. (Not likely. They know about all of us. But if you have thought of it, I'd like to know.)

But I digress. I meant to talk about peaches. Both times we've gotten them so far, they've been a little firm, and needed a couple days to ripen. The first time, my younger daughter refused to believe me, and insisted on trying one RIGHT NOW, so I finally caved, and handed her a hard peach, saying, "Fine. Try it." She took one bite, said, "Mommy, it's hard! Here, Mommy!" and blithely handed it back. "Now do you believe me?" She nodded, and I ate the hard peach. (I find a great portion of my calorie intake comes from food my children have discarded or refused to eat.) For the next couple of days, she would ask every few hours, "Mommy, are the peaches ripe yet?" "No, not yet." But finally, they were. She took a bite and said, "Mommy, it's juicy!" She had a big smile on her face, as juice dripped from her chin onto her dress. And now she wants nothing but peaches. A peach was her dinner last night.

I spoke earlier of foods that were born to be together. I think I have hit upon two things that were born to go with peaches – tomatoes and basil. My older daughter loves cherry and grape tomatoes almost as much as she loves peaches. (Not the younger one – no tomatoes for her. Just peaches.) I had some grape tomatoes lying around waiting to be used, and needed something fresh and salad-oriented to serve with dinner. I halved the grape tomatoes, peeled and diced an equal amount of fresh peaches, and chopped a few small basil leaves, then mixed everything together with a little salt. I had suspected the combination might be good, but was unprepared for just how good. I gingerly took my first taste, then started to laugh with glee like a mad scientist. I felt as if I had engineered an entirely wonderful, new fruit called peach-tomato-basil. Truly, this combination needs to be shouted from the rooftops – "Hey, everyone! Get your tomatoes, peaches, and basil together right now!" We gobbled it right up, with no leftovers.

I googled around on this, and did find a few people who had come up with this combination. (It's true, there is nothing new under the sun, but I'm still proud of myself.) But they all gussied it up with olive oil and/or lemon juice and/or red onions. Some didn't use basil, and just went with tomato-peach. You could do that, but honestly the basil is what makes it. You don't want to use a lot, just a few leaves, so there is merely the hint of basil. You could add the olive oil/lemon juice/red onions too, but if you have really good peaches, and really good tomatoes, I don't see why you should. I couldn't think of anything that would have made ours any better. Just make sure not to forget the salt. It really helps to get the juices flowing together.

(Of course, right after I wrote that, I thought of one more thing that would be good with tomato-peach. Chaat masala. But I haven't tried it yet, so only offer it as a suggestion. If you follow the link, the chaat masala portion starts at paragraph 3. Don't be deceived by the picture of oatmeal.)

My New Friend Maggi

I would like to introduce you to my new friend, Maggi. As you can see from her label, she is both hot and sweet. I like her a lot. My neighbor gets the credit for introducing us. She picked her up at the Indian grocery on a whim, and then decided she was too sweet. So she gave the bottle to us.

It's true, this tomato chilli (Indian spelling) sauce is very sweet. If you've ever tried Indian sweets, you understand. From what I can tell, for a sweet to be authentically Indian, you need to actually be able to feel the cavities forming in your teeth as you chew. Not that this has ever stopped me from eating them. But in this instance the sweetness is balanced by an equally intense spiciness, kind of like sriracha mixed with ketchup, but sweeter and thinner. Though I suppose you could just mix ketchup and sriracha, and accept that it's not exactly right. (My husband already does this when he eats French fries, because everything has to be spicy. Or if he's in a restaurant with no sriracha, he adds several tiny packets of pepper to the ketchup.)

My husband and I tried a little Maggi on our scrambled eggs the other day, and thought it worked pretty well. Though you would probably only think this if you already like to put ketchup on your scrambled eggs. Some people find that disgusting, which I understand, but I happen to like it.

The other thing I tried that worked even better was introducing Maggi to soy sauce. I used a dark, mushroom flavored soy sauce, which I think worked especially well against the lightness of the Maggi sauce. I mixed them both, diluted with water just a bit, added a little salt, and added the mixture to some flat Chinese wheat noodles, along with some kimchi (homemade and super easy – post is forthcoming) and some broiled tofu. Good stuff. Maggi and soy sauce are going to be hanging out together again real soon.