The Runcible Spoon

-Malaka

On St. Paddy's Day, we're having a whiskey tasting with our friend and whiskey eggzpert, Joe Ledbetter. All proceeds go toward funding a year's worth of creating the Runcible Spoon. Tickets are $40, and you can buy them here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2862593093

Between work cafeteria lunches and run-of-the-mill "food for the week" dishes, I did have two share-worthy food experiences this week, both of which involved homemade breads.

Fish tacos + homemade tortillas:

I've never made tortillas, and unfortunately the only flour I had was whole wheat. So I did what I could, but they were a bit salty/baking soda-y. On their own, not awesome. But wrapped around the fish and slaw, really really good. The recipe I used when something like this.

As for the fish: We coated trout in oil, salt and pepper and broiled for a few minutes.

The slaw: radicchio, jalapenos, carrots, cumin, lime, vinegar, mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, cilantro

The sauce: sour cream + mayo, lime juice, lime zest, salt

Yesterday I saw my friend Jess post this thing called shakshouka on Instagram in the morning and immediately decided I'd make it for dinner.

It's basically an Arab eggs-in-purgatory: onions and spicy peppers sauteed til brown + tons of garlic, cumin and paprika + tomatoes, simmered. Eggs poached in that + herbs/feta. Oh and HOMEMADE PITA!

I used smittenkitchen's shakshuka recipe. 

-- Claire

For Christmas I got my fishophile beau a copy of For Cod And Country, by local DC chef Barton Seaver. Lucky for me, his goal is one fish dish a week in 2012. In our first week we made whiting with romesco: It's a traditional Spanish sauce that involves tomatoes and TONS of almonds.

This week, it was lox AND smoked salmon which, from what I've noticed, are terms that are often incorrectly used interchangeably. Lox is what you get on a bagel. It's that oily, buttery pink yumminess that goes great with cream cheese and red onion. How we made it: Cure it in saran wrap for about 2 days -- with brown sugar, salt, dill and onion.

Smoked salmon is literally smoked, with wood chips and everything, after being brined for about an hour and a half. BOTH are delicious. But different.

-- Claire

Brittany Martin of Refinery 29 recently interviewed me and three other foodies for a piece on 2011's top food trends and restaurants in DC. I was so excited to participate because I think I really needed a moment to reflect on the subject! 

Here's a little excerpt of the interview: 

What is your favorite new restaurant in the D.C. area?
"Boundary Stone. I think I've had almost everything on their drool-worthy, comfort-inducing menu — their beer-can chicken sandwich, their soups, their lovely veggie wrap, their french fries and homemade ketchup, their amazing burgers ... Everything is just fresh and wonderful and homemade, and of course, their beer selection is great, too." 

What's your favorite well-established standby?
"Commissary. It just feels so D.C. in there. Not the fanciest food in the world, but the price is right, the coffee is great, and the service is speedy and friendly. It's perfect for those nights when I'm walking from K Street to my house in Shaw and I just don't feel like cooking. I can walk in, read the paper, have a nice meal, and relax. I often get a simple salad with pasta and chicken because it feels like something I would normally whip up at home. Which is perfect because I don't normally like to eat huge, rich meals on the weekdays!" 

Read the rest of the interview on Refinery 29's website. -Malaka

Now, if you read this blog, chances are it's because you're entranced by the sheer magic of eating delicious foods. And it's probable that you're intrigued by new and exotic foods from strange lands and cultures, too. 

So, dear readers, I report to you live from Doha, Qatar, a country located in the heart of the Middle East, a peninsula sticking straight out into the Persian Gulf. Qatar is one of the fastest growing countries in the world, and one of the richest, too. The country found itself sitting on a vast natural gas reserve just 30 years ago, and it propelled the country to incredible wealth. While its architecture is forward-thinking and modern, its culture is not. Most Qataris still wear traditional clothing -- thobes for men and abayas for women -- in public, and live their daily lives according to tribal custom. 

There are currently 1.8 million people living in Qatar, but only 425,000 of them are actually Qatari nationals. The rest are expats who hail from all over the world -- the Phillippines, Nepal, India, Armenia and other parts of the Middle East. Some of these expats have been living in Qatar for a long time, and they have certainly made their mark on Qatari culture. 

One of the country's favorite snacks, for example, is karak and chapati, both of Indian descent. Karak is a sweet, milky cardamom tea that's served piping hot in little cups, and oftentimes served with chapati, a kind of thin, folded Indian bread, for dipping. You can get a spot of karak nearly everywhere, but my favorite karak that I've had so far is at a cafe on Doha's corniche, where people gather and hang out until late into the evening. 

Iran's influence is palpable, too (from the map, you can tell how close they are). Just tonight, we had a bit of Persian folded flat bread, fluffy and soft, stuffed with yogurt cheese, honey, and zaatar, a blend of Arabic spices. The name skips my mind, but when I remember I promise I'll add it in! I swore that I would only have one piece, but I ended up having three -- so addictive and satisfying. 

The other day, we dropped by Souk Waqaf, an open-air market with lots of little shops and stalls and things like that. Thanks to Qatar's ministry of tourism, we had a free sampling of Qatari cuisine, which you can see here in the picture below:

I got to try haris, a type of grain porridge with meat and spices; balateet, a sweet, bright yellow vermicelli noodles sometimes topped with fried eggs; a sweet potato mash with caramelized sugar and butter; and these amazingly thin crepes stuffed with cheese and nutella. Those crepes were crispy, chewy and surprisingly un-crepe like. 

And because there are so many expats who live in the country, the Middle Eastern foods that we all know and love are kind of a free-for-all. Qataris have adopted a love for fuul medamis, a traditional Egyptian food. Everyone, of course, loves falafel (who doesn't?), but the standard is a Lebanese recipe, which uses hummus instead of fava beans. My stepmother has come up with a lot of interesting and inventive twists on old recipes, which she accounts for the pan-Arab flavors of Doha. 

One such recipe is her fuul bechamel, which is a casserole of fava beans and Arabic sausage, topped with creamy bechamel sauce (an Egyptian staple), and baked in the oven until the top is golden brown and bubbly. It brings the concept of Sunday -- err, Saturday here in the Islamic world -- brunch to a whole new level. We ate it with spicy goat cheese, leftover falafel balls, stuffed eggplants with walnuts and peppers, and pickled lemons. 

That's it for now, but I'll report back on some of the other lovely things that I've been eating on this journey. Maa Salam! 

We were very excited to be interviewed by Brandon Wetherbee of You, Me, Them, Everybody Live!, a local (and much-buzzed about) talk show based in Chicago and Washington, D.C. He records them live for everyone to watch and then cuts it up into a nice, hour-long podcast. You can listen to it here: 

http://www.youmethemeverybody.com/shows/YMTE-197.mp3

In this piece, he talks about the history of the Runcible Spoon with me and 'Spoon writer Alison Baitz (and as you'll find out from the interview, a fellow editor at 20 Watts, our zine in college). We also discuss why we chose .info instead of .com for our website, and why we decided to focus on food rather than music. (As I say in the interview, it's because my taste in music stayed in the late 90s-early 2000s.)

And stick around for Kalee Rinehart's act after our interview. It was a coincidence that we were on the same show together. Alison, Kalee and me are all friends in real life, went to college together, had the same major and worked on the same music zine. She's a hilarious comedian -- raunchy but sweet -- and I know that you'll love her jokes. 

-Malaka